The Tirukkural or Thirukkural (Tamil Name: திருக்குறள்), or shortly the Kural, is a classic Tamilsangam literature consisting of 1330 couplets or kurals, dealing with the everyday virtues of an individual.[1][2] Considered one of the greatest works ever written on ethics and morality, it is known for its universality and non-denominational nature.[3] It was authored by Thiruvalluvar.

Considered as chef d'oeuvre of both Indian and world literature,[4] the Tirukkural is one of the most important works in the Tamil language. This is reflected in some of the other names by which the text is given by, such as Tamiḻ maṟai (Tamil veda), Poyyāmoḻi (words that never fail), and Deiva nūl (divine text).[5] Translated to about 82 global languages, Tirukkural is the most widely translated non-religious work in the world.[6] The work is dated to sometime between the third and first centuries BCE and is considered to precede Silappatikaram (1st century CE) and Manimekalai (between 1st and 5th centuries CE), since they both acknowledge the Kural text.[7]

Contents

Tirukkural was originally known as 'Muppaal', meaning three-sectioned book, as referred to by its author himself, since it contained three sections, viz., 'Aram', 'Porul' and 'Inbam'. The word Kural applies in general to something that is short or abridged. More specifically, it is a very short Tamil poetic form consisting of two lines, the first line consisting of four words (known as cirs) and the second line consisting of three, which should also conform to the grammar of Venpa, and is one of the most important forms of classical Tamil language poetry. Thiru is a term denoting divine respect, literally meaning 'holy' or 'sacred'. Since the work was written in this poetic form, it came to be known as 'Tirukkural', meaning 'sacred couplets'.

There are claims and counter claims as to the authorship of the book and to the exact number of couplets written by Thiruvalluvar. The first instance of the author's name mentioned as Thiruvalluvar is found to be several centuries later in a song of praise called the Garland of Thiruvalluvar in Thiruvalluva Malai.[9]

Thiruvalluvar is thought to have belonged to either Jainism or Hinduism. This can be observed in his treatment of the concept of ahimsa or non-violence, which is the principal concept of both religions. Valluvar's treatment of the chapters on vegetarianism and non-killing reflects the Jain precepts, where these are stringently enforced.[8] The three parts that the Tirukkural is divided into, namely, aram (virtue), porul (wealth) and inbam (love), aiming at attaining veedu (ultimate salvation), follow, respectively, the four foundations of Hinduism, namely, dharma, artha, kama and moksha. The Vaishnavite beliefs of Valluvar are bolstered in his mentioning of God Vishnu in couplets 610 and 1103 and Goddess Lakshmi in couplets 167, 408, 519, 565, 568, 616, and 617. Other Hindu beliefs of Valluvar found in the book include previous birth and re-birth, seven births, and some ancient Indian astrological concepts, among others.[10] Despite using these contemporary religious concepts of his time, Valluvar has limited the usage of these terms to a metaphorical sense to explicate the fundamental virtues and ethics, without enforcing any of these religious beliefs in practice. This, chiefly, has made the treatise earn the title "Ulaga Podhu Marai" (the universal scripture).[10]

There is also the recent claim by Kanyakumari Historical and Cultural Research Centre (KHCRC) that Valluvar was a king who ruled Valluvanadu in the hilly tracts of the Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu.[11]

Each kural or couplet contains exactly seven words, known as cirs, with four cirs on the first line and three on the second. A cir is a single or a combination of more than one Tamil word. For example, Thirukkural is a cir formed by combining the two words thiru and kuṛaḷ. The section Aram contains 380 verses, Porul has 700 and Inbam has 250.[12]

The overall organisation of the Kural text is based on seven ideals prescribed for a commoner besides observations of love.[11]

40 couplets on God, rain, ascetics, and virtue

200 couplets on domestic virtue

140 couplets on higher virtue based on grace, benevolence and compassion

Tirukkural expounds a secular, moral and practical attitude towards life. Unlike religious scriptures, Tirukkural refrains from talking of hopes and promises of the other-worldly life. Rather it speaks of the ways of cultivating one's mind to achieve the other-worldly bliss in the present life itself. By occasionally referring to bliss beyond the worldly life, Valluvar equates what can be achieved in humanly life with what may be attained thereafter.[3] Only in a couple of introductory chapters (Chapters 1 and 3) does Valluvar sound religious. Even here, he maintains a tone that could be acceptable to people of all faiths.[11]

It is believed that Valluvar composed every chapter in response to a request to produce ten best couplets on a particular subject. Nevertheless, he seldom showed any concern as to what similes and superlatives he used earlier while writing on other subjects. This allowed for some repetition and mild contradictions in ideas one can find in the Kural text. Despite knowing its seemingly contradictory nature from a purist point of view, Valluvar employs this method to emphasise the importance of the given code of ethic. Following are some of the instances where Valluvar employs contradictions to expound the virtues.[11]

While in Chapter 93 Valluvar writes on the evils of intoxication, in Chapter 109 he uses the same to show the sweetness of love by saying love is sweeter than wine.

To the question 'What is wealth of all wealth?' Valluvar points out to two different things, namely, grace (Kural 241) and hearing (Kural 411).

In regard to the virtues one should follow dearly even at the expense of other virtues, Valluvar points to veracity (Kural 297), not coveting another's wife (Kural 150), and not being called a slanderer (Kural 181). In essence, however, in Chapter 33 he crowns non-killing as the foremost of all virtues, pushing even the virtue of veracity to the second place (Kural 323).

Whereas he says that one can eject what is natural or inborn in him (Kural 376), he indicates that one can overcome the inherent natural flaws by getting rid of laziness (Kural 609).

The Tirukkural is praised for its universality across the globe. The ancient Tamil poet Avvaiyar observed, "Thiruvalluvar pierced an atom and injected seven seas into it and compressed it into what we have today as Kural."[14] The Russian philosopher Alexander Piatigorsky called it chef d'oeuvre of both Indian and world literature "due not only to the great artistic merits of the work but also to the lofty humane ideas permeating it which are equally precious to the people all over the world, of all periods and countries."[4]G. U. Pope called him "A bard of universal man."[15] According to Albert Schweitzer, "there hardly exists in the literature of the world a collection of maxims in which we find so much of lofty wisdom."[14]Leo Tolstoy was inspired by the concept of non-violence found in the Tirukkural when he read a German version of the book, who in turn instilled the concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his A Letter to a Hindu when young Gandhi sought his guidance.[14] Mahatma Gandhi, who took to studying Tirukkural in prison,[3] called it "a textbook of indispensable authority on moral life" and went on to say, "The maxims of Valluvar have touched my soul. There is none who has given such a treasure of wisdom like him."[14]Sir A. C. Grant said, "Humility, charity and forgiveness of injuries, being Christian qualities, are not described by Aristotle. Now these three are everywhere forcibly inculcated by the Tamil Moralist."[16]E. J. Robinson said that Tirukkural contains all things and there is nothing which it does not contain.[14] Rev. J. Lazarus said, "No Tamil work can ever approach the purity of the Kural. It is a standing repute to modern Tamil."[14] According to K. M. Munshi, "Thirukkural is a treatise par excellence on the art of living."[14]Sri Aurobindo stated, "Thirukkural is gnomic poetry, the greatest in planned conception and force of execution ever written in this kind."[14]Monsieur Ariel, who translated and published the third part of the Kural to French in 1848, called it "a masterpiece of Tamil literature, one of the highest and purest expressions of human thought."[16] According to Rev. Emmons E. White, "Thirukkural is a synthesis of the best moral teachings of the world."[14]Rajaji commented, "It is the gospel of love and a code of soul-luminous life. The whole of human aspiration is epitomized in this immortal book, a book for all ages."[14]Zakir Hussain, former President of India, said, "Thirukkural is a treasure house of worldly knowledge, ethical guidance and spiritual wisdom."[14]

Along with Nalatiyar, another work on ethics and morality from the Sangam period, Tirukkural is praised for its veracity. An age-old Tamil maxim has it that "banyan and acacia maintain oral health; Four and Two maintain moral health," where "Four" and "Two" refer to the quatrains and couplets of Nālaṭiyār and Tirukkural, respectively.

Although it has been widely acknowledged that Thiruvalluvar was of Jain origin and the Tirukkural to its most part was inspired from Jain, Hindu and other ancient Indian philosophies, owing to its universality and non-denominational nature, almost every religious group in India and across the world, including Christianity, has claimed the work for itself. For example, G. U. Pope speaks of the book as an "echo of the 'Sermon on the Mount.'" In the Introduction to his English translation of the Kural, Pope even claims "I cannot feel any hesitation in saying that the Christian Scriptures were among the sources from which the poet derived his inspiration." However, the chapters on the ethics of Vegetarianism (Chapter 26) and non-killing (Chapter 33), which the Kural emphasizes unambiguously unlike other religious texts, suggest that the ethics of the Kural is rather a reflection of the Jaina moral code than of Christian ethics.[8]

Barring the Bible and the Quran, the Kural is considered the most translated work in the world. It has been translated to over 80 world languages.[6]

The Christian missionaries who came to India during the British era, inspired by the similarities of the Christian ideals found in the Kural, started translating the text into various European languages.[17] The Latin translation of the Tirukkural, the first of the translations into European languages, was made by Constantius Joseph Beschi in 1730. However, he translated only the first two parts, viz., virtue and wealth, leaving out the section on love assuming that it would be inappropriate for a Christian missionary to do so. The first French translation was brought about by an unknown author by about 1767 that went unnoticed. The first available French version was by Monsieur Ariel in 1848. Again, he did not translate the whole work but only parts of it. The first German translation was made by Dr. Karl Graul, who published it in 1856 both at London and Leipzig. Graul's translation was unfortunately incomplete due to his premature death.[17] The first, and incomplete, English translation was made by Francis Whyte Ellis, who translated only 120 couplets—69 of them in verse and 51 in prose.[18][19][20][21]W. H. Drew translated the first two parts in prose in 1840 and 1852, respectively. It contained the original Tamil text of the Kural, Parimelazhagar's commentary, Ramanuja Kavirayar's amplification of the commentary and Drew's English prose translation. However, Drew was able to translate only 630 couplets, and the remaining were made by John Lazarus, a native missionary. Like Beschi, Drew did not translate the part on love.[17] The first complete English translation of the Kural was the one by George Uglow Pope in 1886, which brought the Tirukkural to the western world.[22] By the turn of the twenty-first century, the Tirukkural had already been translated to more than 37[23] languages across the world by various authors. By the end of the twentieth century, there were about twenty-four translations of the Kural in English alone, by both native and non-native scholars, including those by V. V. S. Aiyar, K. M. Balasubramanian, Shuddhananda Bharati, A. Chakravarthy, M. S. Purnalinga Pillai, C. Rajagopalachari, P. S. Sundaram, T. S. Ramalingam Pillai, and Gopalkrishna Gandhi.[17]

To honor the author of Tirukkural, a 133-feet (40.6 m) Thiruvalluvar's statue was built in stone. It is located atop a small island near the town of Kanyakumari on the southernmost Coromandel Coast of the Indian peninsula, where two seas and an ocean, viz., the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean meet.

^A stone inscription found on the walls of a well at the Periya palayathamman temple at Royapettai indicates Ellis' regard for Thiruvalluvar. It is one of the 27 wells dug on the orders of Ellis in 1818, when Madras suffered a severe drinking water shortage. In the long inscription Ellis praises Thiruvalluvar and uses a couplet from Thirukkural to explain his actions during the drought. When he was in charge of the Madras treasury and mint, he also issued a gold coin bearing Thiruvalluvar's image. The Tamil inscription on his grave makes note of his commentary of Thirukkural.Mahadevan, Iravatham. "The Golden coin depicting Thiruvalluvar -2". Varalaaru.com (in Tamil). Retrieved 25 June 2010.